News Room

Maybe not the Internet foundations of ARPANET and TCP/IP and Mosaic, the codes and packets and standards on which the whole thing is based. But he was a factor in fashioning some of the Web’s upper floors. With his contributions to RSS coding and the Web application framework, Swartz made some of today’s more expansive Internet possible.

But what Swartz also helped create was a philosophy of the Internet, one that remains the subject of great controversy almost 20 years into its life: the libertarian idea that information wants to be free. Read the rest…

Menlo Park, California (CNN) — The search feature on Facebook has traditionally been pretty limited. You type in a name of a person or a business, and it pulls up their Facebook page.

But that’s about to change. On Tuesday, Facebook introduced an upgraded search tool, called Graph Search, that will scour the massive social network to answer more sophisticated questions.

Want to find buddies of your pal Chris who went to Stanford and live in Chicago? No problem. People who like tennis and live nearby? Here you go. How about photos of Berlin from 1989? Done. Read the rest…

The new mega.co.nz will launch with 50 gigabytes of cloud storage for all comers and a global customer support line, but just 15 to 20 staff to handle calls.

Kim Dotcom has announced the 50GB allowance on Twitter, and Australian-based domain name registrar Instra has put up its hand as the new service’s call centre. Instra’s former CEO Tony Lentino has since taken up the same post at Mega.

Current Instra CEO Brian Clarkson told The Reg the company has signed up to deliver Mega’s customer support from a call centre in the New Zealand city of Hamilton. Clarskon said the company has “15 to 20” customer service staff on its books. The team is “a mixture of part time and full time.” Read the rest…